Welcome to Gaia! ::

Oh dear, it's a bit too late for good luck now! sweatdrop

However the Illumination campaign is an excellent starting point.

Had a short introduction game of Rogue Trader with my brother and his friend yesterday.

Oy Vey.

I suck as a GM. Though I wasn't given any time to prepare anything.

Still, what was supposed to be a simple boardroom negotiation scenario with a little combat on the side turned into something not much unlike Blood On The Carpet, with the assigned Arch-Militant and Seneschal failing to intimidate and find useful info that would help my ersatz Rogue Trader win the guilders over. Instead they got nervous, found out the Seneschal tried to hack their systems and panicked, which resulted in the Arch-Militant blasting apart the boardroom servitor with a bolter named "Betsy", the Seneschal setting aflame the guildmaster with her hellpistol and my character killing the attending scribe. We decided to hoof it while the Arch-Militant covered us, which resulted in a rather funny moment where two technicians opened the door, only for one to have his face sliced off with "Montgomery" the Chainsword. The scenario ended with us escaping, somehow, before the two combat servitors could arrive.

At least we got combat down and despite the ill-fated scenario both gents enjoyed it, especially the freedoms they get and the ever-so amusing results of the Critical Hits charts.

Oh yeah, we used minis to make things easier to keep track of.

Last night we had a second session, which somewhat annoyed me as I was just home from work and already bothered and buggered into doing another unprepared session.

I've decided to avoid combat this time round, instead going for an investigation and barter scenario that took place on one of the many decks of Port Wander, just outside the Veil. The general plan was that while the "Pride of Scarus", the PC vessel, was under light repairs, refuelling and provisions, the PC's were allowed to have a looksee around, with no real objectives in mind. They turned it into a quest to find a quest. So after some of the usual "You're looking for work? Frag off pal!" stuff I decided to present them with a drunken captain who had struck it big with the sale of some information and a shady but totally honest (he swears so on his kids and bearded lady) merchant who has a heavily encrypted dataslate for sale with coordinates to a veritable treasure trove of unknown contents. Both PC's took a lot of encouraging and prodding to properly roleplay their characters and do things right, so no points for that performance.

I did decide to give them a little fight in form of a knife-wielding assassin who wanted to kill the Seneschal who carried the slate at that time. One dodge, a missed bolter burst and a few point-blank laser shots later the assassin was dropped, leaving the PC's with an encrypted slate that might lead them to a new adventure.

Thankfully we won't be having any games any time soon, giving me ample time to prepare and work on something better. Which might entail anything. On my mind right now I've got a deserted excavation site in the desert, a ruined city which grants access to a long forgotten data vault or a ship graveyard with a choice hulk that might contain something of use.

Choices, choices, choices..

Anyway, thoughts and ideas are welcome.

RT after-action report:

What they thought they'd be doing: Meet up with local contacts, establish an agreement on what could be dealt in, investigate several potential resource sites and keep an eye out for anything else out of the ordinary.

Instead..

The shuttle was shot out of the sky by automated defences, forcing them down into a disaster struck suburb of an unknown city.

Oh yeah, I used the biggest cliché in the books: zombies as opponents. redface

Off the bat: my players (well two out of three) were idiots. Most of the good and sound thinking came from the "silent and brooding" Arch-Militant, who was in previous sessions a blood thirsty socio-path lunatic, but has grown some common sense. Instead, the new player, whom I don't like one bit rolled up an Explorator who seems to be more violent than he ought to be. Not to mention he kept bitching and bitching about wanting to use his "Sprint" ability all the while, instead of using his other skills (first and foremost: TECH) to check devices, data looms and whatnot. As for the last player, my brother, a p***k as always. He really put my BS skills to the test as he questioned every single thing I throughout the scenario.

Anyway, I left it to them as to how to escape. They could try their emergency beacon, find any other survivors and get info out of them, or whatever. Surprisingly, they clung to their original mission like drowning men. They had just been shot down, bruised and battered, in hostile territory and all they could think about was the faux briefing I gave them to lull them into a false sense of security.

They kept fudging their ordinary tech tests for the beacon, so it was jammed, giving them a valid reason to explore and be dicks as always. They found two survivors standing on top of a large shipping container surrounded by zombies, which sparked a long debate as to whether or not they should be rescued. Thankfully they did, meaning they could ask the survivors about what happened, supplies, escape plans and whatever. They decided to tackle everything at once: finding fuel for a truck, finding a way to take out the AA batteries, send out a distress signal, finding a good place to bunker down and searching for supplies at the same time. Thankfully they split up, with the Explorator going for the guns, the Arch-Militant protecting the survivors and the Seneschal finding a working vox array.

After doing suitable searching and disabling of items I decided to flood the streets with zombie mobs, which proved hard to take down due to their Unnatural Toughness (x3), which resulted in las weapons being useless and the mobs being extra lethal. The Explorator almost got mauled to death when he ignored warnings from the others not to charge large groups, but he somehow managed to survive and bring his power axe down on them. The Arch-Militant did things best, gunning them down while actually keeping an eye on his ammo expenditure. They tried lugging fuel along but it proved too bothersome, so they decided for a last stand at the Skyshield until a bird could arrive. Bird swooped in, they escaped.

Session lasted more than six hours, most of it was taken up by pointless debates of my brother or them discussing tactics, which I denied them after they had a ten minute off-topic chat for the ninth time. They also didn't get any extra XP for proper roleplaying, which they didn't even attempt. This was something I called them out on, hoping that they would improve on this for the next session.

Please do share how it goes, I could go for some feel good experiences from other GM's.

I've got to find me a better group to roll with. crying